In 2020, Cheng Lei was working as a business reporter for China's state-run English language television station when she was arrested on charges of sharing state secrets. She was detained in China for over three years under harsh conditions, including prolonged solitary confinement and restricted access to her family, before finally being released. Now, back in Australia and free to write and speak her mind, Lei recounts her story in A Memoir of Freedom , an extraordinary memoir of her arrest, t...
Jul 08, 2025•58 min
American Jewish journalist Peter Beinart reflects on the world around him – and his place within it – amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza offers a timely reflection, seeking to reimagine what it means to be Jewish in the wake of the horrors unfolding in the Middle East. Drawing on Jewish tradition and history, and global efforts at moral reconstruction, Peter Beinart calls for a new story to take hold – one in which Palestinian and Jewish safe...
Jun 18, 2025•58 min
In 1985, Jeanette Winterson published her debut novel – the groundbreaking and subversive Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit . Genre-bending and narratively bold, it garnered then-rare mainstream success for a story that was fiercely feminist and challenged traditional gender roles. Four decades on, Winterson remains one of our most distinguished writers, renowned for her singular voice and restless curiosity. Her work spans a vast landscape of ideas, from artificial intelligence to religion, from m...
Jun 04, 2025•36 min
Join Barrie Cassidy and Tony Barry, hosts of the Guardian’s political podcast Back to Back Barries, for a clear-eyed analysis of the 2025 Australian federal election. After five weeks of relentless campaigning, Australians have cast their votes – and political commentators and former major party insiders Barrie Cassidy and Tony Barry are here to offer a discerning examination of how, and why, we arrived at the results on 3 May 2025. In this special post-election live recording of the Guardian’s ...
May 28, 2025•37 min
Over an intimate two-course dinner at Montalto, broadcaster and social policy expert Jamila Rizvi and comedian and podcaster Rosie Waterland come together with host Tracee Hutchison for a candid discussion about their deeply personal new book, Broken Brains. Drawing from their own experiences, Rizvi and Waterland reflect on their journeys with illness – Rizvi's rare brain tumour diagnosis and Waterland’s ongoing mental trauma from childhood abuse – and explore the unexpected ways these struggles...
May 21, 2025•1 hr 7 min
Legendary tech journalist and podcaster Kara Swisher opens up about a lifetime of reporting on Silicon Valley with host Sophie Black. In a world where tech billionaires operate beyond the reach of government regulation and press scrutiny, Kara Swisher has devoted her career to holding them to account. Her new memoir Burn Book offers an insider’s history of some of Silicon Valley’s most influential companies, laying bare the utopian ideals and troubling compromises of the people who created them....
May 07, 2025•1 hr 11 min
Trailblazing journalist and proud Gamilaroi woman Brooke Boney opens up like never before in All of It , her powerful debut essay collection. Like many millennial women, Brooke Boney is navigating a society that expects her to chase it all – career, success and personal fulfillment – while doing so under an unforgiving public gaze. In her highly anticipated essay collection, All of It , she reflects on the pressures of life in the spotlight as the first Indigenous host of Australian commercial b...
Apr 29, 2025•50 min
For the past 20 years, Pankaj Mishra has written incisive studies of a world marked by inequalities and the effects of globalisation. He has traced global histories of fascism, the impacts of rising nationalism and applied an astute lens to the fragility of our democratic institutions. Now, he sets his expert mind to the war in Gaza. Garnering praise from the likes of Rashid Khalidi, Naomi Klein and Hisham Matar, Mishra’s latest work, The World After Gaza, reckons with the latest devastating con...
Apr 15, 2025•57 min
In this panel discussion journalist Emma Do, A Plus Market founder Sam van Zweden and writer and podcast host Maggie Zhou examine the barriers within the industry and discuss the evolving vision of an inclusive fashion future. Moderated by cultural commentator Sabina McKenna, these fashion experts and enthusiasts explore the most pressing issues in fashion, from size inclusivity and high price points to ethical production and sustainable consumption. Unboxing the realities of mainstream fashion,...
Apr 01, 2025•44 min
After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine Brooks and partner Tony Horwitz relocated from Australia to the idyllic Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, USA, to raise their children. The life they built there was one of meaningful work, good humour and tenderness. But all this ended abruptly when, during the spring of 2019, Brooks received a phone call with the news that Horwitz – just 60 years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – ...
Mar 25, 2025•47 min
Rachel Kushner’s new novel Creation Lake tells the story of Sadie Smith, an American spy-for-hire working in the secretive world of privately contracted surveillance. Tasked with infiltrating a commune of anarchists in rural France, she becomes entranced by a mysterious cult-leader-like figure named Bruno Lacombe who believes that freedom from the pain of the modern condition can only be achieved through a return to the ancient past. Creation Lake is both a canny homage to French noir and an inc...
Mar 18, 2025•49 min
Ben Shewry knows obsession well. It’s what has propelled his innovative Melbourne restaurant, Attica, to national and global acclaim. His new memoir-meets-manifesto, Uses for Obsession: A (Chef’s) Memoir, is a reflection on leadership, hospitality and humanity, and an unforgettable look inside the sometimes-brutal world of cheffing. Shewry joins host Marieke Hardy for this special live episode of Hardy’s podcast, Marieke Hardy is Going to Die. They plan Shewry’s dream funeral and reflect on navi...
Dec 13, 2024•58 min
Content warning: This episode includes occasional course language. From her childhood in the Australian outback to the heights of her chart-topping international success as a singer-songwriter, country music icon Kasey Chambers has trusted her gut, stuck to her values and learned some hard truths, always while trying to live by the best advice she’s ever received: just don’t be a d**khead. At this special event at Geelong Library & Heritage Centre, Chambers discusses her new book Just Don’t ...
Nov 29, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Unapologetic, sometimes controversial, and always unflinchingly honest, Roxane Gay has built a remarkable career using her powerful voice to articulate the nuances of our most pervasive issues. Body image, civil rights, feminism, popular culture, social etiquette – you name it, Gay has written about it. The esteemed writer, professor and cultural commentator was joined by host Jan Fran at Melbourne Town Hall for one night only as they discussed her most strongly held views on the culture and pol...
Nov 22, 2024•1 hr 6 min
National treasure Noni Hazlehurst details her life on stage and screen and takes us behind-the-scenes of a brilliant career. Noni Hazlehurst’s versatility as a performer knows no bounds. A household name and a beloved actor, she's graced Australian screens and theatre stages for over forty years. From Playschool and Better Homes and Gardens, to Monkey Grip and her acclaimed theatrical career – Hazlehurst has earned her place as an Australian icon. At this Melbourne-exclusive event, Hazlehurst jo...
Nov 15, 2024•59 min
Critics Eda Gunaydin, Michael Sun and Cher Tan examine the present state and potential futures of literary criticism. Literary criticism seems to be in an endless state of decline. In so-called Australia, a particular flavour of cultural cringe is yoked to cultural hegemony: a critic might find themselves locked within the ivory tower, or self-censoring for fear of offence, or deliberately pursuing contrarianism for clicks. How, then, do critics move beyond this deadlock? Who decides what is 'go...
Nov 12, 2024•58 min
Content warning: This recording includes occasional course language. Evelyn Araluen, Hasib Hourani and Mykaela Saunders discuss the careful craft of shaping a language unsettled. Trace the contours of language, seek out its limits and push. Histories are cut up, struck through, misplaced, misremembered. Join Evelyn Araluen, Hasib Hourani and Mykaela Saunders as they discuss the careful craft of ripping the empire’s language to shreds. In their work, these brilliant writers shift form in myriad w...
Nov 12, 2024•1 hr 3 min
What is the future of the great Australian novel? Novelists Jessica Au, Brian Castro and André Dao contemplate the novel, the nation and its literature with Lynda Ng. Marking 30 years since Brian Castro considered the ‘new novel’, three of Australia’s most talented contemporary novelists discuss the future of the form. Is there such a thing as a ‘Great Australian Novel’, or have twentieth-century paradigms expired? What, exactly, does greatness have to do with fiction? How does the novel relate ...
Nov 12, 2024•1 hr 3 min
International bestselling author Rebecca F. Kuang discusses her groundbreaking novel Yellowface and the future of storytelling at this exclusive Melbourne event. Investigating diversity, racism and cultural appropriation with the thrilling pace of a Twitter meltdown, Rebecca F. Kuang’s 2023 novel Yellowface captivated readers across literary and BookTok communities alike. In her only Melbourne event, Kuang discusses her successful career, plagiarism, privilege, and the state of the publishing in...
Nov 08, 2024•57 min
A runaway favourite of book clubs the world over, Bonnie Garmus’s debut novel Lessons in Chemistry transports readers to early 1960s California. Elizabeth Zott – single mother and brilliant chemist – unexpectedly finds herself hosting a television cooking show, and changes hearts and minds in the process. Inspired by Garmus’s mother’s generation of overlooked and under-acknowledged women, Lessons in Chemistry examines the gender pay gap, misogyny in the workplace and women’s rights. At her only ...
Sep 27, 2024•52 min
On the 5 November this year, the American people will go to the polls to make a choice, the impact of which will be felt around the globe. Will Republican nominee and now convicted criminal, former President Donald Trump, topple Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris?? How did America reach this point, and how will either candidate’s victory impact Australia’s relationship with the US and the global political landscape? Don Watson, celebrated Australian writer and former political advisor...
Sep 20, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Award-winning journalist Heather Ewart hits the Back Roads to Kyneton to journey through her great Australian road trips. Over a career spanning four decades, Heather Ewart has been senior political reporter and a foreign correspondent posted to London, Washington and Brussels. Raised on a farm in country Victoria, her adventures have come full circle to see her hosting ABC TV’s popular program Back Roads. In Ewart’s new book, Back Roads: The Great Aussie Road Trip, the much-loved journalist sha...
Sep 13, 2024•1 hr
Our annual panel of pop culture experts Brodie Lancaster, Alison Willmore, Hannah Diviney and Jared Richards gather for a dissection of the zeitgeist. Baby Reindeer, The Bear and hot rodent men: lt has been a ferocious (and sometimes feral) year for pop culture, and it seems that we’re not slowing down any time soon. On the occasion of the 2024 Melbourne International Film Festival, host Brodie Lancaster is joined by Vulture and New York magazine film critic Alison Willmore , disability advocate...
Sep 06, 2024•1 hr 2 min
As part of The Wheeler Centre's 2024 Spring Fling program and in partnership with Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, listen to an exclusive podcast interview with celebrated writer Olivia Laing, interviewed by Sophie Cunningham. Olivia discusses her new book, The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise , which moves between real and imagined gardens, exploring how new modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds. The result is a beautiful and exacting account of th...
Aug 26, 2024•53 min
From ‘manfluencer’ culture and the rising popularity of Andrew Tate, to lists ranking teenage girls on their appearance, there’s an urgent need to address the widespread sexism and misogyny in our schools and wider society. Left unchecked, these harmful attitudes and behaviours will see rates of male violence against women continue to rise. In this panel discussion, three experts consider where these attitudes begin, and the importance of positive male role modelling in addressing them. The prob...
Aug 16, 2024•1 hr 7 min
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers have been sharing stories on this continent for millennia. From best-selling and award-winning poetry, memoir and fiction to powerful works that defy categorisation, Blak writing depicts, challenges and honours culture, community and Country. Much-loved books by First Nations writers stand strong on shelves in homes, libraries, bookshops and classrooms – but there are always more books and writers to be discovered and rediscovered. In 2023, Universit...
Aug 02, 2024•8 min
The Olympic Games have always been a site of soft diplomacy for participating nations. This has never been truer than in 2024, as athletes and countries prepare to compete from 26 July to 11 August at the Paris Olympic Games. Olympic champions Patrick Johnson and Kieren Perkins join award-winning sports reporter Tracey Holmes to discuss the future of the games and examine how Olympic competition is shaped by the tensions of geopolitical affairs. Together, they deep-dive into Australian represent...
Jul 12, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Meredith Whittaker is not afraid to take on tech giants. In 2018, she led the famous mass staff walkout at Google over the company’s laissez faire attitude towards sexual harassment allegations and the moral and ethical implications of its business practices. Now, as President of Signal, the not-for-profit encrypted and secure messaging app, Whittaker is one of the world’s most respected experts on data surveillance and the future of big tech. She has advised the White House, the US Federal Trad...
Jul 05, 2024•1 hr 3 min
In this Wheeler Centre podcast exclusive, hear former Next Chapter recipient Khin Myint in conversation with Anna Krien as they discuss Myint's Fragile Creatures . Khin Myint is an Australian-Burmese writer from Perth. His debut memoir, Fragile Creatures , is about how his family tackled his sister’s wish to die as she fought a non-terminal illness. Fragile Creature s, is a family story told with humour, wonderment and complete honesty. This is a book about what happens when realities clash – it...
Jun 21, 2024•50 min
In 1993, Ma Thida was sentenced to 20 years in prison for her support of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy and for ‘endangering public peace, having contact with illegal organisations, and distributing unlawful literature’. Released from prison in 1999, Thida’s advocacy for freedom of expression continues unabated as Chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee and as a current fellow in the Writers-in-Exile Programme of PEN Germany. Earlier this month, Ma Thida appear...
Jun 14, 2024•39 min
